For decades Eric Peters has been a leading analyst of the automotive industry. Last week he published a piece in the American Spectator on President Joe Biden’s ambitious electric vehicle policy.

Peters notes that Joe wants an electric vehicle EV in every garage. “It’s all part of the Green New Deal that Joe Biden endorsed on his website (but has since removed).”

“Electricity will inevitably cost more as artificially induced demand for it increases, putting a strain on the already strained existing infrastructure. More demand than is necessary, interestingly  because the typical electric car touts performance, which it must because it cannot tout efficiency or economy.”

Achieving  lots of speed “requires enormous  quantities of environmentally unpleasant things like cobalt, a key component of electric car batteries. Cobalt is uncommon — and mined (often by hand and often by the hands of children) in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, at much cost to the local environment.”

“Joe has been evasive about where the electricity needed to power the Green New Deal will be summoned from, if not from natural gas, coal, and oil–fired utility plants, which power the bulk of the country’s several major power grids.”

“At the moment, EVs are optional. But under the Green New Deal, that option will be made standard. Joe wants to mandate the market part by making it very hard — if not impossible — for people to buy anything else but electric cars.”

He might have added that California Gov. Gavin Newsom has declared that internal combustion vehicles will be off the road by 2035.

John McClaughry is vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute